Article excerpt

Byline: Wes Vernon, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

This is a scholarly work. When you read it, prepare to focus. It is a valuable reference source, a relatively thin volume of modest page count, but huge in the volume of information. If one undertakes the process of untangling all the propaganda bombarding the West (especially the United States) defining radical Islam as mainstream, clearly documented information is a must.

Andrew C. McCarthy has on-the-ground familiarity with the plot to destroy Western civilization and the freedoms enjoyed therein and replace them with anti-freedom, anti-American Shariah law. The plan would bring about radical transformation from within by stealth, infiltration or, if all else fails, violence and murder. Mr. McCarthy was the lead prosecutor in the pursuit of the terrorists involved in the first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993.

In that capacity, Mr. McCarthy made it his business to learn what caused Islamists to inflict suicide bombings against innocents, including children, who had done them no harm. He quickly concluded the very term Islamic democracy is a dangerous oxymoron. With all the outreach effort on the part of two American presidents, why does the Muslim world not understand America's good intentions? Answer: Jihadists understand goodwill very well. They just don't like us.

President George W. Bush and President Obama have tried to deal with the Islamist terrorist movement as if it were grounded strictly in religion rather than as the political supremacist ideology that it is.

Some advisers for Mr. Bush essentially saw what they wanted to see. The president eventually was prevented from using such politically incorrect terms as Islamofascism or even terrorism.

It should not surprise readers that Mr. Obama's decision right from the start to double down on that approach was largely devoid of such naivete. Our 44th president had attended Islamist schools and was immersed in Islamic culture at a tender age.

Turkey at the dawn of the 21st century was still a bulwark of secularism largely as a result of an 80-year move away from the strictures of Islamist supremacism. In 2000, Turkey was a close friend of Israel and a friend of the West. A dozen years later, Mr. McCarthy notes, [Turkey] is an Islamist champion of both Islamic jihadists pledged to annihilate Israel and Sunni supremacists engaged in a self-described 'grand jihad' to destroy the West by sabotage.

That strategy, the author believes, lies partly at the doorstep of the cunning Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who became fast friends with President Barack Hussein Obama as the latter made Turkey his first foreign visit as our head of state. …